Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The students will be making "All About" books about an animal of their choice. They made a list of their top 3 favourite animals that they wanted to write about, and from that list I put the students in groups of 3-4, according to the animal they wanted to write about. This past week the kids have been getting together in their small groups to read all about their chosen animal, and to write down extra cool facts ! Later on this week they will meet with me in small groups to make a graphic organizer, and next week they will be ready to start writing.

Leading up to this, we talked a lot about non- fiction books, the difference between fact and opinion, and how to add detail to our writing.

The students have been working hard learning all about 2-D and 3-D shapes. This week they built structures in their groups (they are so good at working together!). They spoke a lot of French, describing the shapes, talking about the 2-D shapes they see in the 3-D shapes, and, using language like sur (on), sous (under), à côté de (beside), etc.

Monday, February 17, 2014

I have recently come across a fantastic program called "Math and Movement". It is a programmed designed for kids to have FUN while LEARNING their numbers!! (WOW!!!). The program incorporates music and various exercises (exercises similar to "Brain Gym", see below for more info). We have been starting every morning with about 5-10 minutes of M&M and the kids are loving it! It gets them up and going and a chance to practice counting (by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's, etc.).

I would highly encourage families to do some M&M anytime at home as well - click here to check out the website for more information and benefits to the program.

What is Brain Gym?
Brain Gym is a series of movements created to enhance communication between the left and right brain. It has been shown to improve a wide variety of skills including writing, speech, memory, etc. It is an incredible successful program. A staple move to find out if your child's left and right brain are working well together is to have your child do a cross over (bring your left elbow to your right knee, switch, bring your right elbow to your left knee, and so forth). This is one of many exercises for your brain.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The kids made impromptu skits in French and they turned out great! The sound is not great so I apologize for that - in the New Year we will make more of these and work on getting a better sound.
They only had about 10 minutes or so to prepare what they were going to say - it turned out great! Here are the links:

Sunday, December 1, 2013

On Thursday our class took a trip to the Joseph Schneider Haus to travel back in time! We learned about all the jobs adults and kids had to do about 150 years ago. We even got to wear their clothes and do their jobs! Take a look at our pictures to see what we learned.

We started the day by reading a story about who the Schneider family was and where they lived - we found out that we were going to see what the house was like that they lived in!

Do you see the baby in the hood?

Before we could go into the house, we had to wash our hands. We realized there was no tap to turn on! We were told that back in the day, people had to go get water from the water pump outside. The water was pumped from the ground and then it had to be taken inside and be heated over the fire, which took a LONG time! We used a bit of soap and quickly rinsed our hands.

This bench outside of the main entrance was called a day time bed. Can you guess what is inside the mattress cover??? Here's a hint: it's green and you peel it off of corn...

Sound comfy??

The reason why we had to wash our hands was because we were now going to bake ginger cookies!! Of course, the girls got to sit on the side of the bench that was closest to the fire - we had some real gentlemen in our group!

The gentleman told us we were going to create a pattern, and luckily we knew all about patterns!
He said we were going to put 4 across and 3 top to bottom.. lets see how we did.

First we grabbed a little bit of dough and we had to roll it into a tiny little ball.

We added a bit of flour so it wouldn't stick.

Do you see the pattern?

Once all the dough was on the cookie sheet, we had to push down the dough with a fork.

Here is the oven!
Do you see the pot of water being heated?

In go the cookies!! We got to eat our cookies at the end of the trip. They were super delicious!

After the baking we saw the pottery room. We made some really good connections! We looked around to see if we saw anything that we had in our homes too - there wasn't much! They seemed to use a lot of different pots and pans back in the day.

We also got a chance to grind some coffee beans! We spun the handle round and around and heard all the coffee beans being crushed.

Then we got to see the powdered coffee beans.

We also learned that coffee beans have to be heated, or roasted, in order to get the type of flavour we want. The longer they are roasted, the darker they are - darker coffee is not as strong as lighter roasted coffee.

Here you can see the coffee beans before they are roasted.

After the pottery room we went to go see the laundry room. Even though it was called the laundry room, the laundry wasn't being done in there - it was just a room to store all the things they needed to do laundry (the laundry board, soap, drying rack, tub, etc.). We learned that the women had to go down to the river and wash their clothes there. We also learned that there was only one kind of soap that they used for everything! Shampoo, detergent, soap for your hands, etc. - it all came from the same bar of soap that the Schneider family made themselves. Wow!

That was all on the main floor of the house. Then we went up the stairs and learned about the different materials they used to make their clothes. He told us his pants were made out of wool, but his shirt was made out of flax. Here the gentleman is showing us the flax plant and what they do to it to make the clothes. Following is a short video of him explaining it.

We also go to see where they sleep.
We took a good look at the covers and their mattresses. We realized they didn't have mattresses! Their mattresses were basically bags of straw and the covers were made with goose feathers! Every so often they would grab some geese and pluck all their feathers out, wash them all very carefully by hand, and then maybe after 5 years they would have enough feathers to fill a cover for a bed. That's a LOT of work! Poor geese....

The covers were made out of wool.

A lot of families had to share their beds - so everyone gave it a try to see what it'd be like to share your bed with one or even two people!

Not too cozy, but it definitely seems better than sleeping on the floor!

Our last stop was up in the attic - it was freezing!!! There wasn't much there, just a lot of space for storage.

When we were all done, we went back downstairs to eat our cookies that were now ready!

What an incredible trip we had!!
Feel free to leave any comments you may have!